Cable car site work restarts

Plans to complete the first stage of a project that organisers hope will precede the return of the High St cable car are back on track after an unexpected hiatus.

Dunedin Heritage Light Rail Trust spokesman Neville Jemmett said work was expected to start again this week after Naylor Love stepped in to complete a building at Mornington Park free of charge.

While the project has had a number of delays in the past due to site and resource consent issues, Mr Jemmett said he hoped the building set to house three cable cars will be in place by early next month.

Last year, the trust gained consent for a 10.3m by 5.9m building, which will have 6.8m lengths of track to allow the cable cars inside to be pushed out and put on public display.

The building is intended as an interim structure to house the cable cars while the trust seeks to re-establish the route to Mornington.

In October, Mr Jemmett said he expected the building to be in place by November, but while the site was cleared and fencing put in place, that did not happen.

Yesterday, he said the trust was required to close down the work for around two weeks to deal with health and safety issues, but then there were further complications regarding building at the site that delayed it further.

A replacement builder required could not be found before Christmas, so work had stopped.

However, a trust member contacted Naylor Love and the company had taken on the work as a community project.

``He just turned up at the right time,'' Mr Jemmett said.

Initial work checking the site began yesterday, and boxing for a concrete slab was expected to begin today.

The trust would provide three volunteers to help.

Mr Jemmett said the prefabricated building for the site had arrived in Dunedin, and was ready to go.

Once the concrete was in place, the building would be erected.

Mr Jemmett said he hoped the building would be in place by late this month, or early March.

Cable cars would be brought to Dunedin from Christchurch by Hall Bros Transport, also at no cost.

``The whole site, right up to the point of the cable cars [arriving] is about $70,000 worth, and we haven't had to find any of that money at all.''